Spare a thought for drums. They've got feelings too. Well, according to Andreas Werliin, they have. As one half of the duo Wildbirds & Peacedrums, he's on a mission to convey pure feeling in music. And if that means wringing emotions out of a drum kit then he's up for it.

Wildbirds & Peacedrums are the ultimate in downsized bands, a lean and mean combination of Werliin's primal rhythm and Mariam Wallentin's impassioned vocals that strip music down to its very essence. Such a combination might sound like a busking group from hell, but Wallentin's voice makes everything possible.

Her goosebump-invoking sound operates on a sliding scale between the blues roar of Janis Joplin on the one hand and the spookily evocative folk singing of Mary Margaret O'Hara on the other. Add some of her own fiery passion for good measure, and you have a singer of deceptively wide range that can handle a heavy spiritual lament like 'I Can't Tell in His Eyes', the raw gospel feel of 'Bird' or use her driving rhythmic feel as a multi-tracked vocal choir on 'The Way Things Go'.

The two met as students at Gothenburg's Academy of Music and Drama in Sweden in 2004, and they began performing together the following year, when they also married. 'We had no musical ideals to trust or lean on, so we just had to believe in ourselves and each other,' says Werliin.

What emerged was a heady brew of pagan blues, spiritual pop and ecstatic soul music haloed by Werliin's drums and percussion effects. It sounds surprisingly uncluttered, their less-is-more ethic giving the illusion of a fuller sound.

'I don't need to cover up Miriam's voce with a lot of other stuff,' Werliin adds. 'I can just play a simple rhythm and rely on the space/silence. We keep a lot of space in the recordings and somehow it seems people fill in the rest themselves - a jazzer hears horns and basslines and a punk hears smashed guitars!'

Although the absence of keyboard players, bass players, horn players and backing vocalists may seem a bit extreme, at least it has enabled Wildbirds & Peacedrums to find a direct line into musical intensity and heartfelt expression, which makes it something to be treasured.